TAY TIME
With the V&A fi nally set to unveil its wares in Dundee, Susan Mansfi eld considers the bold cultural
transformation of ‘Scotland’s coolest city’
W hich Scottish city is the only designated UNESCO City of Design in the UK? Where did the organisation take place for the largest ever representation of Scottish contemporary art in China? Which destination was recently described in the Wall Street Journal as ‘Scotland’s coolest city’? The answer to all of these is Dundee, which will have its Bilbao moment on Saturday 15 September when the only Victoria & Albert Museum outside London opens its doors there.
In anticipation of that event, the eyes of the world are already turning towards the post- industrial city by the Tay which was chiel y distinguished by the milling of jute (now defunct) and production of The Beano. With the V&A as the l agship in its £1 billion waterfront redevelopment, Dundee is on the brink of an important transformation.
But, as anyone in the city will tell you, this change is not as simple as a heavyweight London museum piloting a satellite into a depressed Scottish town. Dundee’s turnaround is testament to decades of hard work, and a homegrown arts scene of which the V&A will be an important attraction, but not the whole story. ‘There has always been a strong creative ecology in the city, with lots of creative people doing grassroots things,’ says Gillian Easson, co-founder and director of networking
organisation, Creative Dundee. ‘We’ve been getting on with it, and now the world is suddenly turning its attention in our direction.’
It was during the 1990s that Dundee’s stakeholders decided to make culture a linchpin in its regeneration. But this wasn’t a decision that came out of nowhere. Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design (DJCAD), now part of Dundee University, had long been among the country’s top art schools; Abertay University was becoming a leader in Computer Games Technology (one of the inventors of Grand Theft Auto studied there), and Dundee Rep was home to Scotland’s only permanent repertory theatre company.
However, putting the arts at the forefront of this city’s strategy for recovery was something new. The scale of its ambition was coni rmed in 1999 with the opening of Dundee Contemporary Arts (DCA), a purpose-built arts centre bringing together a restaurant, cinema, contemporary art gallery, and providing a home for the city’s existing highly acclaimed print studio. DCA’s current director, Beth Bate, pays tribute to the building’s ‘pioneers’. ‘They made the case for art and culture in Dundee, and drove forward the development. They made a case for the role of contemporary art in people’s lives, and in Dundee’s life. Now DCA is respected on the national and international stage.’
The building continues to be an important
108 THE LIST 1 Apr–31 May 2018